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About Me

I was born in 1962; you do the math. (See also: I'm too lazy to remember to update this thing regularly.) I bought my first house in the summer of 2009; I share it three cats and with the memories of The Runt and Little Girl, who both passed away in 2011. Rocky, the cat for whom this blog was named, passed away in 2008; I miss them all. I wish I lived somewhere where the winters weren't eight months long; other than that, life is good.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Notes on TV and Amy Winehouse

I used to love L.A. Ink, until the head tattoo girl started dating Jesse what's-his-face, and now I can't watch it anymore.

And I can't watch the New York version, whatever its name is. Too testosterone-y. Oh, wait, I think it's "N.Y. Ink". Original.

I miss Millionaire Matchmaker. Whatever happened to that one? The guys were all so ... skeevy. Evidence that even a ton of money can't save you from being a jerky schlub.

Oh! And I really, REALLY miss Animal Cops. Although it got so I could hardly watch it anymore, even though all they showed were the stories with happy endings.

I love Teen Mom, but MTV needs to get its act together and start showing the reruns in some sort of coherent order. Then again, sane scheduling has never been MTV's forte - they just seem to throw random stuff up there. It's like a chimp is doing their grid or something. OH! And remember when they used to show music videos? *sigh*

I tried to get into "Expedition Impossible", but it's too similar to The Amazing Race. And I think I'm getting burned out on the whole race-around-the-world thing.

I really like to watch Hell's Kitchen. Something about watching the contestants chain-smoke is oddly compelling. But I don't like Gordon Ramsay. Even though I once had an extremely inappropriate dream about him. *cough*

I need to either start watching movies or cancel my Netflix subscription. I've had the same DVD for, like, three months now.

Oh! And I was listening to the radio last Saturday morning, and the announcer is all, "Coming up - Remembering Amy Winehouse", and I was all, "wellp, THERE'S a surprise - she finally kicked off."

Isn't that terrible? I wasn't even surprised. But, I mean, if you couldn't see THAT train coming down the tracks, you would have to be blind.

I wonder what did her in? Right now they're saying it was a bad Ecstasy pill, but I guess when you're doing a shit-ton of drugs chased down with lots of booze, it could be kind of hard to narrow it down.

And what's the attraction? I mean, I like a drink as much as the next person, (Okay, okay, sometimes I like SEVERAL drinks) but it's not like I want to go SWIMMING in it. Plus, who wants to feel like dogshit the next day? That's enough to rein me in, right there.

Not to say that I didn't do my fair share of overdrinking back in the day, because I did. Maybe you just outgrow that kind of behavior. Unfortunately, Miss Winehouse didn't live long enough to outgrow it.

And I suppose I could get into the story of my thirty-something niece who, ala, Miss Winehouse, is quite literally drinking herself to death. Why would you do that to your body? And it's not like she (my niece) hasn't been warned. The doctors have TOLD her that the next bout of pancreatitis could kill her. It's like if someone told you, "The next cigarette you smoke WILL KILL YOU", and you went ahead and lit up. Confusing.

But then again, I guess it's her choice. I guess.

Oh, and I was just reading the comments about one of the news stories, and someone said, "She (Amy Winehouse) was hard-wired for addiction. She didn't choose this."

Um ... I don't agree with that. She DID choose it. She chose it everytime she snorted a line or took a pill.

Now, I am in no way, shape or form comparing cigarettes to hard drugs, except ... well, I guess that's what I'm about to do, so ... Okay, so I smoked for thirty years. I chose to smoke. And then one day, I quit. I chose not to smoke. Was I addicted to cigarettes? Sure. It was an addiction, but it was also a choice. Yes, addiction is a powerful thing. So is your brain. Maybe they duke it out when you're trying to quit something, and whichever is stronger wins?

I guess if you've got a lot of people providing you with free drugs and stuff, it could be easy to overindulge. I don't know. It's just sad.

9 comments:

I used to love watching L.A. Ink too, but last season sucked because it got to be less and less about the tattoos. I was debating on whether or not to watch this season, until she became a slut (or maybe she's always been one? when exactly do you "become" one?) and decided to also showcase the male whore and my decision was made.

There's a good new show on, but I can't remember the name. Yeah, I know. Some thing about tattoo school where this famous tattoo artist (female) teaches students for like a week or some thing. I just caught it last week.

I had my first drink around the age of 15, I think. It was a disaster from the beginning; I would drink faster than anyone I knew, and always until I blacked out. I kept doing this all my adult life...sometimes I didn't drink for weeks, even months -- I guess I wasn't really *addicted* to alcohol in a way that I craved it while not having it...but once I had it, one glass was too much and ten wasn't enough. It took me a loooong time to admit that I wasn't going to control it, and so I decided to stop altogether. There was no fun in it anymore. So why am I not able to drink civilized when others are ? I do believe that some of us are wired differently....meaning some of us are more vulnerable to addiction whereas someone else can snort a line of coke and not become addicted. I think that had I ever tried coke or heroin I'd probably be dead now because most likely I would've used drugs the same way I used alcohol....

Of course, it is no problem for me NOT to drink when it's a zero tolerance...and I quit smoking too, cold turkey, long ago. I can still smoke, say, a pack once or twice a year if I feel like it and then go back to being a non-smoker, so cigarettes do not have that "addictive" effect on me. Go figure..

I guess addiction is very personal, or that's my view on it. I think Winehouse didn't have enough motivation to be clean, it seemed she had no desire to quit -- but then again, I remember my mom used to swear and swear that NOW she had quit...and would fall off the wagon again the following week...so I'm inclined to believe that just as you cannot cure, say, diabetes...you can't really "snap out of it" and cure your addiction if it is that of a worst kind. It's not always down to will power, even though you CAN train your brain with time...Anyway, RIP Amy.

While most of the pop entertainment world mourns Amy Winehouse, my cousin Bobby also overdosed sometime early last week and was discovered in his apartment on Sunday morning...yes, it was a very bad scene. He was a drug user and heavy drinker from high school onward -- he'd clean up long enough to get a job, hold it together for long enough to lead his parents to hope he'd straightened up, and then start diving again. The last time I saw him was when I bailed him out of jail several years ago. Junkies break your heart. I can't help feeling that everyone is missing the tragedy...it's not that she was a brilliant singer who was special and she died. Hell, Bobby was a muffler repair guy...and it's equally tragic that he died. The tragedy is that they wasted their life being wasted and couldn't or wouldn't stop. -- Bridgett

You just want to take these people and SHAKE them, you know? Not that it would do any good.

I've spoken about my niece before - Right now her dad is talking about setting her down and telling her that he's going to take out a life insurance policy on her, so that he'll be able to pay for her funeral. And I feel like telling him, "Don't you understand? That won't make her stop." I guess he feels like he has to try. Or be dramatic, one or the other.

Most of what I know about addiction I learn from reality TV, but it seems to me that the addict might not have a choice to stop using (depending on how severe the addiction is), but s/he does have a choice to ask for help in order to be able to stop. That's just my two cents.

As for Ms. Winehouse, yeah, I totally saw that coming. Either she was going to get clean, and everyone would lose interest in her (which would be another kind of death), or she would OD or commit suicide or some such thing. She was just shy of her 28th birthday, too. I guess that's the shelf life of young singers who make it big.

And Kate, since Miss Winehouse's death I've found out that there's actually a thing called the 27 Club - musicians who died at 27. You think that'd be a warning to, like, stop partying at 26 or something.

And yeah, I mean, too much of ANYTHING is no fun at all, so you would think that they had no choice but to keep using. But people DO quit, they quit every day, so I just don't know.

And I mean, I'm not holding myself up as some paragon of virtue (HAAAA), but like I've said, I smoked for thirty years. I smoked A LOT. My blood was probably half damn nicotine. And then one day I quit. Just - quit. So there's that.

man, I'm just going around and around on this, aren't I? I just can't wrap my ahead around doing something that you KNOW is dangerous, that you KNOW could kill you, and doing it until it DOES kill you. Then again, see my smoking ...